Mateen’s father told NBC News that his son was enraged by seeing two men kissing in Miami a few months ago, and Mateen’s former wife told the Times that he would make anti-gay comments when he was angry. But now Omar Siddiqui Mateen makes us do just that. people generally in post-marriage-equality America. We don’t often think about sexual orientation in the context of terrorism, or about violence against L.G.B.T.
The choice of target does not seem coincidental. He took an assault rifle and a handgun into Pulse, a popular gay bar-billed as “Orlando’s Premier Gay Night Club”-during gay-pride month. “Although it's still early in the investigation,” he said, speaking from the White House, “we know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate.” The shooter, Omar Siddiqui Mateen, had claimed allegiance to ISIS in a call to 911 before killing forty-nine people. When President Barack Obama addressed the nation on Sunday, just hours after the worst mass shooting in American history, he tried to untangle what was known about the motives of the murderer. A vigil in Wellington, New Zealand, remembers the victims in the mass shooting at Pulse, a popular gay night club in Orlando, Florida.
